Tuesday, March 28, 2017. Chaos and violence continue, some liars rush
forward to rewrite history, the Iraqi Parliament meets to discuss the
deaths in Mosul from last week's US bombing, and much more.

In United States, there's a day known as Groundhog Day, February 2nd,
where allegedly (this is myth) a groundhog emerges from his hole and, if
the animal sees its own shadow, it retreats back into its hole and we
end up with six more weeks of winter. If it doesn't see its shadow,
spring begins. Again, this is myth. There's a comedy classic film
GROUNDHOG DAY starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.

Less well known is Democratic Leader Spine Day.

It takes place every four years, a month or two after a presidential inauguration.

Following the inauguration, a Democratic Leader emerges from their hole.
He or she has come to the surface to search for his/her spine. If,
upon surfacing, the Democratic Leader learns that a Democrat is in the
Oval Office, he/she scurries back down the hole to hibernate for another
four years. However, if s/he learns that a Republican is in the Oval
Office, the Democratic Leader searches madly for their spine and,
finding it or some approximate, begins publicly denouncing things they
were previously silent on.

If you didn't know a Republican was in the White House (President Donald Trump), you should now.

Yesterday, KPFA's Mitch Jeserich
rediscovered the Iraq War after eight long years of silence on the
dreadful (and money wasting) LETTERS AND POLITICS (the show began in
2009 to celebrate the accomplishments of Barack Obama -- but it soon
became focused on The Tea Party because, let's face it, Barack had few
accomplishments).

70-year-old has been Reese Erlich blustered about current events in Iraq
under Donald, "There's no UN resolution, there's no NATO call, there's
no US Congressional vote -- nothing! They're just waging a new war
because they can get away with it."

Reese discovered his voice on Democratic Leader Spine Day -- thereby
explaining why he was silent for years as Barack Obama did the same
thing. Someone might want to remind Erlich that Barack's actions also
took place without a UN resolution, without a NATO call and without a US
Congressional vote.

Last week, a US airstrike in Mosul led to the deaths of civilians.

That's not all that new.

And we were objecting to the laid back attitude to these deaths for some time, for example September 4, 2014:

The western press this morning on Iraq is at its typical uselessness.It's all the spin garbage of 2003, presented in a fresh package.X numbers of militants/[ISIS]/et al killed.Sometimes with a "____ says."Because none of it is verified, just repeated.Civilian deaths can be documented but, of course, the western press ignores those deaths. Always.Instead they serve one wave of lies after another.And, like the first three years of this illegal war, they promise that this or that high ranking leader has been killed. It's all garbage.

Another thing we've repeatedly noted: Mosul citizens were ordered -- by the Baghdad-based government -- to stay in Mosul.

Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty
International, said: “The fact that Iraqi authorities repeatedly advised
civilians to remain at home, instead of fleeing the area, indicates
that coalition forces should have known that these strikes were likely
to result in a significant numbers of civilian casualties.“Disproportionate attacks and indiscriminate attacks violate international humanitarian law and can constitute war crimes.”

Hundreds of civilians have been killed by airstrikes inside their
homes or in places where they sought refuge after following Iraqi
government advice not to leave during the offensive to recapture the
city of Mosul from the armed group calling itself Islamic State (IS),
said Amnesty International. Survivors and eyewitnesses in East Mosul
said they did not try to flee as the battle got underway because they
received repeated instructions from the Iraqi authorities to remain in
their homes.The shocking spike in civilian casualties from both US-led coalition
airstrikes and ground fighting between the Iraqi military and IS
fighters in recent months has also raised serious questions about the
lawfulness of these attacks. In one of the deadliest strikes in years
just days ago on 17 March 2017, up to 150 people were reported killed in
a coalition airstrike in the Jadida neighbourhood of West Mosul,
eventually leading the coalition to announce that it is investigating
the incident.“Evidence gathered on the ground in East Mosul points to an alarming
pattern of US-led coalition airstrikes which have destroyed whole houses
with entire families inside. The high civilian toll suggests that
coalition forces leading the offensive in Mosul have failed to take
adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths, in flagrant violation
of international humanitarian law,” said Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis
Response Adviser at Amnesty International, who carried out field
investigations in Mosul.

“The fact that Iraqi authorities repeatedly advised civilians to
remain at home instead of fleeing the area, indicates that coalition
forces should have known that these strikes were likely to result in a
significant numbers of civilian casualties. Disproportionate attacks and
indiscriminate attacks violate international humanitarian law and can
constitute war crimes.“The Iraqi government and the US-led coalition, must immediately
launch an independent and impartial investigation into the appalling
civilian death toll resulting from the Mosul operation.”Fleeing the city ahead of the fighting was also extremely difficult
for residents of Mosul, as IS militants routinely punished and at times
killed those caught trying to leave. Wa’ad Ahmad al-Tai, a resident of
the al-Zahra neighbourhood of East Mosul, was among many civilians who
followed Iraqi government advice to stay put.“We followed the instructions of the government who told us ‘stay in
our homes and avoid displacement’. According to the instructions,
residents who had nothing to do with . . . [IS, in Arabic] should stay
in their homes... We heard these instructions on the radio… Also
leaflets were dropped by planes. This is why we stayed in our homes,” he
said.As the fighting intensified Wa’ad Ahmad al-Tai, his brother Mahmoud
and their families sought shelter at their other brother’s two-storey
home hoping it would offer them more protection.“We were all huddled in one room at the back of the house, 18 of us,
three families. But when the house next door was bombed, it collapsed on
us, precisely over the room we were sheltering in. My son Yusef, nine,
and my daughter Shahad, three, were killed, together with my brother
Mahmoud, his wife Manaya and their nine-year-old son Aws, and my niece
Hanan. She was cradling her five-month-old daughter, who survived, thank
God,” he said.Hind Amir Ahmad, a 23-year-old woman who lost 11 relatives, including
her parents, grand-parents and four young siblings, in a coalition
airstrike in East Mosul, described the fatal attack on 13 December 2016
to Amnesty International:

“We were sleeping when the house literally collapsed on us. It was a
miracle none of us was killed. We ran to my uncle’s house nearby. At
about 2pm that house too was bombed and collapsed on us… almost everyone
in the house was killed – 11 people. My cousin, two aunts and I were
the only ones who survived. Everyone else died. It took us six days to
find only pieces of their bodies, which we buried in a mass grave in a
field nearby... I don’t know why we were bombed. All I know is that I
have lost everyone who was dearest to me.”In another air strike, 16 people were killed in three adjacent houses
in the Hay al-Mazaraa district of East Mosul on 6 January 2017.
Survivors and neighbours told Amnesty International that in so far as
they knew, no IS fighters had been present in or around the house. Among
the victims were the three children and the mother of Shaima’ Qadhem,
who had been arrested and killed by IS the previous year. Ahmad, a
relative of the victims, told Amnesty International:“This family was targeted by all sides. Last year [the Islamic State] arrested and
executed the children’s mother and now the children themselves were
killed by a coalition bombing. Civilians got trapped in this war and no
one helped them. When I tried to leave Mosul with my family, we were
caught by [the Islamic State]. They were going to pour petrol over us and burn us. In
the end we managed to escape death by paying a heavy fine. Others were
not so lucky and were executed... Did the government, the coalition
think how to protect the civilians in this war? It doesn’t seem so.”

International humanitarian law (also called the laws of war) demands
that all feasible precautions must be taken by warring parties to a
conflict to minimize harm to civilians, and that attacks must not cause
disproportionate harm to civilians – that is, damage which would be
excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage
anticipated.

“Requests for air support,” Prothero continues, “which already go
through an overly cumbersome process before the U.S.-led coalition will
act—went unnoticed or ignored, and most of the units in Ramadi were
unable to coordinate with one another because of deep-seated distrust
among units composed of soldiers from different sects.”

And you know he [Wellen] thinks it's awful because he adds "Even worse" immediately after.Did you ever think you'd see the day where Foreign Policy in Focus would
publish an article whining that bombs were not being dropped fast
enough on a country?First off, Iraq is not an empty field.It's an occupied country.The process should be "cumbersome."These air strikes have killed civilians.They could kill many more if they were less "cumbersome."Second, they have to be "cumbersome" because otherwise -- as Congress
and the administration have both noted -- the US bombings could be used
by various Iraqis to take out their political rivals.It really is appalling that Foreign Policy in Focus has published an
article bemoaning a process for bombing that they find too rigorous. But I guess when a Democrat's in the White House a number of supposed activists let their inner whores work the street corner.

Shameful and when whores do what Wellen did, events always slap them in
their ugly faces. See previous efforts at Operation Happy Talk and this
is how it always ends, Iraq and karma get the last word.

Hours after Wellen's embarrassing war propaganda went up, AFP was reporting,
"An airstrike by a U.S.-led coalition flattened an entire neighborhood
of
a northern Iraqi town controlled by ISIS, killing dozens of people
including civilians, witnesses and security sources said." An estimated
70 civilians were killed in the bombing of Hawija. AFP quotes Hassam
Mahmoud al-Jubbouri stating, "I ran with my sons and wife and took cover
under the
staircase. Three to four powerful explosions followed the first blast
and I felt the roof of my house was about to collapse over our heads."

But Russ Wellen wants more US air strikes on Iraq. He wants more and he wants them to be "less cumbersome."

Again, this is a very sad day in the history of Foreign Policy in Focus.

You can't walk it back when you've come out as a War Hawk. When you've
come out in favor of bombings and of relaxing even the most tiny efforts
of constraint on those bombings, you really have nothing to left to
say, not on the left.

You can't walk that back.

Russ Wellen can't.

FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS can't.

They argued for more strikes.

They lamented -- with the 'great' MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS -- the "cumbersome" rules on strikes.

So don't forget to add them to the list of bad guys.

They certainly earned this place on that list.

I believe it was Sara Flounders, earlier this month on BLACK AGENDA RADIO,
who pointed out that Democratic-Socialists object to war under
Republicans but under Democrats they are on board. She is exactly right
and look no further than FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS hailing air strikes
just two years ago.

Saturday, Speaker of Parliament Salim al-Jubroui announced that there
would be a session of Parliament on Tuesday to address the strike. ALSUMARIA notes the session took place today with al-Jubouri and 170 MPs present. ALL IRAQ NEWS adds that al-Jubouri declared the dead to be victims and martyrs and calling for benefits to go to their families. ALSUMARIA elaborates that he also declared that there should be no immunity for the deliberately causing the loss of life.